IBM Brings Enterprise-Level Storage to Midsize Businesses

IBM announced the availability of the IBM System Storage DS5020 Express, a new storage disk offering that delivers enterprise-class storage capabilities for midrange businesses.

Midsize organizations face the same issues as larger organizations, which is managing, storing and securely analyzing an ever-increasing flow of data. IBM states its System Storage DS5020 delivers the high performance, availability and solutions to which midrange businesses that enterprise customers are accustomed, at a lower price point.

"Midsize businesses are no different than their larger counterparts, as they are facing relentless data growth and shrinking budgets, which is why they're seeking storage solutions that will help reduce costs through efficiencies, says Doug Balog, vice president, disk storage and business line executive for IBM. "The IBM System Storage DS5020 Express addresses those needs, while its full-disk encryption also makes it ideal for hosting business-critical applications."

The System Storage DS5020 Express disk system includes an industry leading 8 Gbps Fibre Channel (FC) as well as iSCSI host capability that seamlessly integrate into existing and new infrastructures, while providing the balanced performance needed to satisfy the mixed workloads created by consolidation. Balanced performance supports the needs of consolidated or virtualized environments such as IBM PowerVM, Microsoft Windows 2008 Hyper-V and VMware vSphere 4, while delivering outstanding response times.

Its modular architecture and efficiencies help lower acquisition and operational costs as performance and configuration requirements can be met with minimal raw capacity. And when it's time to expand, the DS5020 can add incremental capacity with no downtime.

The System Storage DS5020 will also be the first midrange disk product in the industry to offer self-encrypting drives, making it ideal for housing business-critical applications. Full-disk encryption provides data security at the most basic level, the hard drive, protecting against many exposures and vulnerabilities at virtually no performance loss. This expands IBM's commitment to providing industry-leading security and encryption for both tape and disk. Earlier this year, IBM announced availability of disk encryption with its high-end System Storage DS8000 line.

The DS5020 comes with four 8 Gbps FC interfaces for connectivity to hosts or storage area networks, and can support an additional four ports, which can be either 8 Gbps FC or 1 Gbps iSCSI. The DS5020 supports up to 112 drives with EXP520 expansion units. Drive options include FC, self-encrypting FC, and SATA. The DS5020 supports all current premium features, including encryption, partitioning, FlashCopy, VolumeCopy and Enhanced Remote Mirroring. The system will be available September 4th, with prices starting at $22,500, which includes IBM service support and a three-year warranty.